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Reforming Jim Crow : Southern politics and state in the age before Brown

This text reshapes how we think about the origins of the civil rights era. The book paints a complex portrait of racial politics in the South in the first half of the 20th century and shows how the weaknesses in the Jim Crow system allowed reformers to lay some of the groundwork that would lead to the system's eventual collapse.

The problem of the South and the beginning of reform --
Lynching, legitimacy, and order --
Southern reform and the New Deal --
Democratization for the white South --
The natural way : education in the Jim Crow order --
Higher education for Blacks in the South : pragmatism and principle? --
Building the Jim Crow university system --
Jim Crow reform and the rebirth of Black political citizenship --
The end of Jim Crow reform.

Responsibility:

Kimberley Johnson.

Abstract:

This text reshapes how we think about the origins of the civil rights era. The book paints a complex portrait of racial politics in the South in the first half of the 20th century and shows how the weaknesses in the Jim Crow system allowed reformers to lay some of the groundwork that would lead to the system's eventual collapse.

Reviews

Editorial reviews

Publisher Synopsis

Johnsons study establishes that reformers often had countervailing goals, that the state was central to the reform and support of Jim Crow, and that understanding how all these variables fit together is very difficult. We need to learn from this excellent book and its methods and data as we try to understand how social, political, and legal change occurs. * Alfred L. Brophy, University of North Carolina, The American Historical Review *Read more...